Blood on my hands: a surgeon at war. Craig Jurisevic. Melbourne: Wild Dingo Press, 2010 (328 pp). ISBN 9780980757002.

This Autobiography is set in Kosovo 1999, in the weeks before North Atlantic Treaty Organization bombing finally forced Serbia to make peace and stop its ethnic cleansing of Kosovars. The author, Craig Jurisevic, a cardiothoracic surgeon from Adelaide, served with the International Medical Corps in Albania. There he kept a journal which, a decade later, he revisited, with the help of writer Robert Hillman, to write this book that describes what he saw and how he felt.

As the chapters unfold, it is unnerving to see how the author’s sense of responsibility escalates, not only towards the wounded soldiers and civilians on whom he operates but also to those exposed on the front line without medical support.

Jurisevic (his mother’s Slovenian surname) becomes disgusted, angered and eventually consumed by the injustice — the evil of ethnic cleansing and the brutality of its perpetrators, the Serbian militia. It is not only the dreadful injuries that move him, but also the way in which they are inflicted and the manner in which people are executed. He is unable to act the part of a detached foreign doctor, nor tolerate the Albanians who exploit and extort the sick and injured Kosovars — local mafia barons who enrich themselves on the suffering.

During the final weeks of the war, Jurisevic serves on the front-line, operates in a cave, and is forced to defend himself against Serbian attacks.

This is an extremely well written book, but not one that is just to be enjoyed — it is brutal and honest; shocking but authentic. There is no other like it, and small wonder that it is being adapted for the big screen. Its readership will be much wider than the medical market and it is likely to become a bestseller. The worst comment I can make about its content is that it is all true.